Montgomery Ward and CO. Catalogue and Buyers' Guide, Fall and Winter 1896 - 1897, No. 60

Montgomery Ward & Co.

Montgomery Ward & Co., 1896

Original Montgomery Ward mail order catalogue.  5th ed, published Sept. 1896. Publisher's color wraps.  Spine curled, a few scuffs to edge.  Small chip missing from left corner of front cover, a few tears along cover edge.  Small "Albert P. Fisks" stamp on cover. Front cover shows a mailman delivering the catalog to three happy women and a man on a front porch.  748 pages.  Generally very good internally.  Minor tanning, but a sound copy.  Heavily illustrated.  A few color plates showing samples. 

"Montgomery Ward was founded by Aaron Montgomery Ward in 1872. Ward had conceived of the idea of a dry goods mail-order business in Chicago, Illinois, after several years of working as a traveling salesman among rural customers. He observed that rural customers often wanted "city" goods but their only access to them was through rural retailers who had little competition and did not offer any guarantee of quality. Ward also believed that by eliminating intermediaries, he could cut costs and make a wide variety of goods available to rural customers, who could purchase goods by mail and pick them up at the nearest train station."   In 1896 the US post office started to offer free rural delivery.  This led to expansion of the mail order business. - Smithsonian